A thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning

'Discount Dave' selling former Cadillac Club to Riverview Church

Inside the former Cadillac Club in REO
Town, Dave Sheets’ desk is wedged into one end of what used to be the
bar. On what was once the dance floor, a leather sectional sits,
festooned with a giant price tag. Couches, chairs, desks and dressers,
also plastered with price tags, pack the rest of the 20,000-square-foot
space.

For 40 years, Sheets, 61, has been known
as either “Discount Dave” or “the Mattress King,” and for four as “Dave
Sheets, owner of the Cadillac Club.” But Sheets’ Discount Dave’s
Buy-It-Rite, which used to be next door, burned to the ground in 2009,
and what was left was moved into this space, the former club.

And now he’s about to ditch all of those monikers. Sheets has agreed to sell the building to the Holt-based Riverview Church.

The church’s vision for Sheets’ space
includes a room dedicated to Sunday worship, a banquet hall that could
be rented for weddings or other special events and a potential coffee
shop that would be open daily. The idea would be to create a bustling
center of activity that would see more than just Sabbath traffic.

And if the sale goes through, it will come with Sheets’ liquor license.

“Our lawyer is still trying to figure out
what we’ll do with that — the idea would be to use it in our banquet
hall,” said Dan Price, one of the church’s pastors. “But the rumors are
totally untrue that we’re going to be brewing beer. Years ago, the
Journal wrote a story that said we were brewing in the church’s
basement. We don’t even have a basement.”

(That February 2008 Journal story
profiled RiverBrew, a ministry of Riverview that met over a few beers
“to be an entry point into the church,” as ministry leader Brett Maxwell
said at the time. Price said the ministry only lasted about a year.)

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope said the
church would need a special land use permit to operate on the
commercially zoned property, which has never been zoned for church
purposes. The permit will require City Council approval, which will
likely be brought up in the next 90 days. Price said the final price —
he requested the price range not be published — was contingent on that
permit. However, even if that price comes in on the higher end, Sheets
still stands to lose about three quarters of the $2 million he invested
in the building to transform it from a bowling alley into a supper club
and to operate it.

Sheets shuttered the Cadillac Club five
years ago this month for lack of business. When it opened in September
2004, it was called in a City Pulse story “an all-American sandwich of
pop-culture zing and pseudo-class,” stocked with statues of the Blues
Brothers and the Rat Pack, and the gleaming hoods and trunks of
dismembered Cadillacs adorning the walls. It looked like a ’50s-era Las
Vegas lounge crossed with a cruise ship showroom. Now it’s a cluttered
makeshift furniture store.

But that’s not what Price sees when he looks at it.

“This space is going to fit our needs
perfectly,” Price said. “For years, we’ve wanted to become a
neighborhood church, and this move to REO Town will help us accomplish
that. There seems to be a lot of friendship there — we like what’s going
on. That whole area seems to be on the cusp of coming back. We’re
excited about the future.”

The coffee shop, if it materializes in
the final plans, could help alleviate the dead space in the heart of REO
Town that would be created by the banquet hall and worship space, which
wouldn’t see much use throughout the week. The east side of Old Town
and the 600 block of Michigan Avenue in downtown Lansing both
accommodate faith-based programs in potential shopping or entertainment
districts — Christian Family Fellowship Church and City Rescue Mission,
respectively — and noticeably suffer from a lack of retail foot traffic.
Price’s would-be neighbors, however, seem to be open to the idea, for
the most part.

“If it brings people down here, then I’m
cool with it,” said Paul Trowbridge, owner of Cuttin Up Barber Shop that
opened a couple doors down from the Cadillac Club last November. “More
the merrier. As long as it’s not an empty building — I’m tired of
looking at eyesores.”

Ryan Wert, owner of the nearby Elm Street
Recording studio and a prominent REO Town advocate, said he also
approves of the potential new owners.

“I’m not much of a church guy, but I know
some of the Riverview people and they’re pretty awesome,” Wert said.
“They seem to have a vision for the space, and they’re going to make the
best use of it as anyone I know.”

The REO Town location would be the
church’s third. Riverview has locations on Willoughby Road in Holt as
well as on Michigan State University’s campus in Erickson Hall, which is
a once-a-week venue.

“We’re always looking at ways to love Lansing better,” Price said.

Another Riverview pastor, Noel Heikkinen,
said the church wants to be good neighbors in REO Town. “We know that’s
an area the city wants to develop, so we’re not going to make any
problems for them. We just want to be part of the urban environment,” he
said.

Although REO Town is on the rebound,
Sheets might have found it difficult to reopen the club because of
liquor violations and problems with the city that occurred when it was
up and running.

Regardless, he sounded very ready to move
on. He said the Cadillac Club essentially drained his life savings.
When asked if he regretted anything, he paused before answering.

“Looking back, I guess I was way too
early,” Sheets said. “I’ve always been a step ahead, but this time it
cost me. I basically just blazed a path for the next guy.”